London: The Selden Map and the Making of a Global City, 1549-1689

Robert K. Batchelor

Abstract

This book describes the emergence of London as a global city between 1549 and 1689, as an important population, economic and cultural center that was particularly transformed by its contact with Asia in this period. This process is usually described as one that occurred in a national or Atlantic World context and extended outward in a proto-imperial fashion. But in this period, maritime Asia and the empires and trading cities associated with it played a driving role in defining globally-oriented institutions and historical changes in London. These partial shifts influenced by and partially tra ... More

This book describes the emergence of London as a global city between 1549 and 1689, as an important population, economic and cultural center that was particularly transformed by its contact with Asia in this period. This process is usually described as one that occurred in a national or Atlantic World context and extended outward in a proto-imperial fashion. But in this period, maritime Asia and the empires and trading cities associated with it played a driving role in defining globally-oriented institutions and historical changes in London. These partial shifts influenced by and partially translated from the world of Asian trade included the emergence of the joint-stock corporation, developing understandings of national autonomy, the increasing importance of history and law, the image of absolutist authority by the monarch, and the revolutions in science and politics in the late seventeenth century, which are often seen to mark the birth of modernity. The methodology employed in the book uses translation of both Asian and European sources from this encounter as well as the history of cartography, the history of science, and the history of the book and manuscripts in order to better understand historical processes of linguistic exchange. New archival sources discovered in the course of research by the author include the Selden Map of China.

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